CHARLES 


ELiOT NORTON 


TWO 


ADDEESSES 




B5r 


EDWARD 


WALDO EMERSOlSr 




AND 


WILLIAM 


EENWICK HAKRIS 



Glass 
Book 







CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
TWO ADDRESSES 




CHAULES ELIOT KOIITON 



CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
TWO ADDRESSES 

BY 

EDWAKD WALDO EMERSON 

AND 

WILLIAM FENWICK HARRIS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1912 






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CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

THE MAN AND THE SCHOLAR 

An Address Delivered before a General Meeting 

OF THE Archaeological Institute of America 

in Toronto, December, 1908 

BY 

Edward Waldo Emerson 



CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

The Man and the Scholar 

Mr. President ; members of the Archaeological In- 
stitute of America here assembled: — 

You have honored me by your call to speak to you 
of your Founder and first President. "Dead, yet 
living" are the first words that come to me. Through 
eighty years he strove to choose at each parting of 
the ways the upward path. He has opened the eyes 
of hundreds to see it through the fog or the dazzle. 
He has awakened many in fellowship to strive to be, 
as he has been, a Helper and Illuminator. 

Near friends asked me not to make a eulogy, but 
the more closely I have looked into Mr. Norton's Ufe, 
the more faithfully active and brave and sweet I find 
it. Yet as far as I can in this short space, I will let 
him speak, or his friends, or his works, speak for him. 

In the journal of Judge Samuel Sewall is an entry 
written in the seventeenth century telling of an earnest 
discourse he had with young John Norton, later first 
pastor of the ancient church in Hingham, Massachu- 
setts. I wish there were space for it here, for those 
who knew your honored Founder, gone from our 
sight, might see in this brave young ancestor, under 
utterly different conditions, the essential traits of his 



A CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

descendant — a questioner, scrupulous yet hopeful, an 
independent thinker, steadfast American, a teacher of 
the Spirit and doer from the heart, Charles Eliot 
Norton. 

His grandfather, it is said, was almost driven to 
utter unbehef by the dreadful '' Scheme of Salvation" 
taught in his day. 

Andrews Norton, Charles Norton's father, was, in 
his prime, the eager yet well-equipped and skilful 
champion of the new Unitarianism. ''He believed," 
said his friend, the Reverend Doctor Newell, "in the 
Gospel of Christ and not the Gospel of Calvin — the 
gospel as it came fresh from Heaven in its own native 
beauty and power." He was counted an able theo- 
logian, an exact scholar, and an accomplished critic. 
Yet he was withal a lover of nature and of poetry, 
and himself ventured on the slopes of Parnassus. 
During his careful work of translation of the Gospels, 
and writings on their genuineness, he corresponded with 
authors and critics abroad, and was, for a time, the 
editor of the ''Select Journal of Foreign and Periodical 
Literature." Removing from Bowdoin College to 
Cambridge, he was, first, tutor in mathematics, then 
librarian and lecturer on bibhcal criticism, and 
finally professor of sacred literatiu-e. He fixed his 
home in the quiet of Shady Hill, long before the in- 
vasion by roaring railroads, and irresistible encroach- 
ments of Boston suburbs. Though formidable in the 
critic's chair, he was a kindly man, domestic and hos- 
pitable. 



TWO ADDRESSES 5 

Madam Norton was of the Eliot family, a lady of 
refinement and of great dignity and sweetness. 

Of such parents was born a son, Charles Eliot, in 
November, 1827, in the pleasant house in a sunny 
clearing of a wood of pines and beeches, his father's 
home, and his, until his death nearly eighty-one years 
later. It was a home of the best type of New Eng- 
land after the passing of its austerity allowed its 
brave and kindly virtues to shine out, while its sim- 
plicity remained. But three years since, Mr. Norton, 
in a talk on old Cambridge to its Historical Society, wel- 
comed, he said, 'Hhe opportunity to express my piety 
for my native town, and to say how dear a privilege 
I count it to have been born in Cambridge and to 
have spent here much the greater part of my life, and 
how deeply I reverence the ancestors who have be- 
queathed to us the blessing of their virtues and the 
fruits of their labors. 

" The society was of exceptional pleasantness and of 
pure New England type. Few artificial distinctions 
existed in it, but the progress of democracy had not 
swept away the natural distinctions of good breeding 
and superior culture. Its informing spirit was Hberal 
and cheerful ; there was general contentment and satis- 
faction with things as they were. . . . The house- 
holds were homes of thrift without parsimony, of 
hospitahty without extravagance, of culture without 
pretence. The influence of the college gave to the 
society a bookish turn, and there was much reading — 
much more of the reading which nourishes the intelli- 



6 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

gence than in these days of newspapers, magazines and 
cheap novels." Every one was then interested in the 
Edinburgh and the North American Reviews. 

The boy had no brothers to grow up with, but the 
blessing of three sisters, two older and one younger 
than himself. Hence, and because of his delicate 
organization (though his constitution was good), also 
because he was born a scholar, he did not have so 
much of the rough and healthy playground education, 
buit was early a lover of birds and flowers, and ready 
to settle in a corner with an imaginative book when 
he came in. He never went through the hunting and 
fishing epoch' of a boy's life — except in books. As 
often is the case with such boys, he was given to friend- 
ships with older people. He tells of Longfellow's kind- 
ness to him, a boy of eight, when, as a man of thirty, 
he came to live near by, and later of Lowell as a dear 
friend and neighbor in their youth, quoting Cowley's 
lines, of the University town oversea : — * 

"Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, 
Have ye not seen us walking every day ? 
Was there a tree about, which did not know 
The love betwixt us two ? " 

The Holmes boys were near neighbors; the lively 
Wendell until he went to Paris to study, and John, 
shy, humorous, beloved, for life. 

His sister tells a pleasant story of the little Charles, 
perhaps ten years old, which has the flavor of a child- 
hood of other days than these. He was sick with 
membranous croup, now called diphtheria. Dr. John 



TWO ADDRESSES 7 

Ware told the mother that he had known but one 
case to get well. The child himself knew that he was 
in great danger. He hoarsely whispered to his mother, 
"I wish I could live, so that I could edit father's Works." 
He did. 

He went to day schools in Cambridge and in Bos- 
ton, and entered Harvard, a small boy of fourteen, — 
in jackets. As his delightful home was but a half 
mile off, and he could bring his friends and cousins 
there, he naturally did not enter far into ordinary 
undergraduate Hfe, rather convivial in those days, and 
less athletic. Classmates, and always friends, were 
Childs and Lane, later Harvard professors, the first 
the genial man, lover of Old Enghsh ballads, the 
second the witty and exact Latin scholar. Charles 
Norton easily stood high in rank, especially in the 
classics. In those days, Southern youths, of attrac- 
tive manners and aristocratic bearing, formed a con- 
siderable fraction of every class. Norton formed 
friendships with some of these, and because of this, and 
famiUarity with the Southern point of view through 
his summer visits to Newport, where they then resorted, 
he, though an antislavery man, was less early and 
active in the cause than Lowell. Francis Parkman 
was a college friend, and after his return, broken in 
health and eyesight from his recklessly brave experi- 
ment in venturing his sickly life in wild adventures 
with a stone-age people, to study there, Charles Nor- 
ton helped him in preparing from his notes his admi- 
rable Oregon Trail. 



8 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

It now seems a strange, but it was a wise choice, 
which sent the young Norton away from the library 
to the counting-room of a Boston firm engaged in the 
East India trade. But it is well for a scholar or a 
teacher to have been in the market-place and street, 
acquired their useful drill, and known their tempta- 
tions. More than that, the three months' ocean 
voyage to India as supercargo, the contrast between 
the raw university town and the drowsy splendor of 
the ancient East, must have stirred his imagination, 
short as was his stay. He returned by way of Egypt 
and Italy, and that fair land began to throw her charm 
over him when his father's failing health called him 
home. Then (1852), in company with a friend, he 
went into an independent business, — cotton perhaps, 
— venturing therein a legacy that had come to him. 
In a year or two all of this was gone, but he left no 
debt unpaid, and withdrew from trade with honor 
and experience and the knowledge that his call was 
otherwhere. 

First of all then, he acted, happily, as Wordsworth 

says, 

"Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought," 

and edited the two volumes of the translation of the 
Gospels which his father was finishing when death 
overtook him; also he gathered the miscellaneous 
essays. It pleased him, too, to print a little volume of 
his father's hymns and poems. Some of these last 
show great love of nature and close observation, one 
especially on a New England ice-storm. The beau- 



TWO ADDRESSES 9 

tiful hymn, ''While thee I seek, protecting Power, " was 
written by the elder Norton. 

The hard lot of the helpless poor had always stirred 
his father's pity, and it is pleasant to find that one of 
the first published works from the son's pen was an 
article in the North American Review on ''Improved 
Dwellings and Schools for the Poor." Beginning as a 
review of certain EngUsh works on the subject, it did 
not stop there, but went on to show in exact detail 
the shocking condition of the Boston low tenement- 
houses, almost past belief now ; to reconmiend strongly 
a board of health and sanitary laws, and to urge the 
duty of all good men and women considering such 
neglect and suffering as calling, to them for help. He 
had gone to the pains of introducing wood-cuts of 
ground-plans and elevations of model tenements in 
England. 

Meanwhile he went to work at his own door in Cam- 
bridge, and established, or helped to estabhsh, an even- 
ing school, the first that had been there, for boys and 
men, who had to work by day. The Irish immigrants 
of that day were mostly illiterate. He and his friends 
taught these. On the day of his funeral there came, 
with other mourners, the mayor of an important New 
England city, who has been kept in his place for several 
terms by desire of citizens of all parties to have an 
honest, efficient manager of their affairs. He was a boy 
to whom, while he was driving a milk-cart, Mr. Norton 
had been a friend, and whom he had interested in 
making something of himself. At nearly the same 



10 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

time with the evening school, Mr. Norton was active 
in the Sunday school of Dr. Newell's church. 

But now, for a season, his health failed so far as to 
frighten many of his friends. His trouble was weaken- 
ing and very obstinate. Yet he kept cheerful on prin- 
ciple and worked. 

The following year, he sent forth anonymously a 
little book called '^Considerations of some Social 
Theories'' with this text from Burke,^— "Flattery cor- 
rupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is 
not of more service to the people than to kings." In 
it he urged on us Americans — as he has faithfully 
done for more than fifty years — the duty of being 
watchful for the dangers that may beset "our brilliant 
yet audacious experiment in Democracy," and of not- 
ing, for our good, pure standards that were set up, and 
examples given in certain great respects, even in lands 
afar, and centuries long past; and that this is wiser 
than to look only at our fathers' achievements, and 
ours thus far, and bhndly and extravagantly boast. 

And now the happiness of a great friendship came 
to him. The young scholar from England, Arthur 
Hugh Clough, with the best fruits that the Rugby 
school life and training and the Oxford culture could 
graft on a manly and independent nature, — a poet 
too, and a charming man, — came to try to live here 
by his scholarship. He established himself in Cam- 
bridge and brought good letters. He wrote home "I 
have sworn eternal friendship with young Charles 
Eliot Norton"; and soon after, "Norton is the 



TWO ADDRESSES 11 

kindest creature in the shape of a young man that 
ever befriended an emigrant stranger anywhere." He 
showed Clough the blessed condition of the mass of 
people here, their freedom from poverty, from fear, 
from oppression, from persecution by the intolerant — 
their "chance in hfe," and Clough saw the contrast to 
the sad condition common on the Continent and to a 
great extent in England, so much that he was partly 
sorry to return when a good position opened to him 
there. But during that short stay, a change was 
wrought in Charles Norton. Clough had emancipated 
himself, like Arnold, from the dogmas of the Church 
of England, and was free in his rehgion. Norton had 
gone on in the simple worship of the Channing Uni- 
tarian. Now, his rehgious thought was awakened, 
stimulated, broadened, through the leaven of Clough's 
influence. He was ready for it ; he felt no shock, only 
new joy and beauty in the inner and outer life, in 
realizing, as never before, that "the Spirit maketh 
free." No jar was felt with the beUef and practice of 
the household. To him it may have seemed that he 
was taking up his father's advancing thought where 
he had dropped it, and carrying it farther forward. 
Happily, perhaps, the elder Norton was gone when he 
came to express his belief, for each generation can 
advance but so far — so dear and deeply sunk are the 
lessons of childhood. 

In 1855, Mr. Norton sailed for Europe with his 
mother and sisters. They staid abroad for two years, 
in England and Switzerland in summer; when cold 



12 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

weather came, going to Italy, where they Uved mostly 
in Rome, happy in all the rich gifts she had for them 
of beauty, and of companionship with the Uving and 
those whom we call dead. 

It is strange that one whose hfe came to be so much 
occupied with Art never felt the personal impulse to 
draw or paint, nor had he in youth improved such 
slight opportunities to see paintings and statues as his 
neighborhood offered. He did not know AUston, 
who, during Norton's early youth, was living in Cam- 
bridge. Later, he had friendly relations with Kensett 
and Allan Gay. But he knew the woods and the 
meadows and the daily miracles of form and light and 
color that Nature works. Through the young artist 
Stillman, and also through his mother's reading, he 
had been interested in Ruskin's first work, the Modern 
Painters, and through Ruskin, in Turner. He modestly 
declined a letter to Ruskin that should make any claim 
on his time, but gladly took one asking leave for him 
to see the Turner pictures at Ruskin's home. But that 
good man, with sympathy not cased in reserve, most 
kindly showed him his treasures. A pleasant account, 
but erroneous in detail, of the meeting of the Norton 
and Ruskin families, not long after, on the Lake of 
Geneva, is given in Ruskin's Prceterita, but the essence 
is true, that a helpful friendship and strong there 
sprang up, enduring to the end. These men had the 
common ground of noble aims earnestly pursued, deU- 
cate perceptions, keen love of natural and ideal beauty> 
and dislike of all that was unworthy, which they fear- 



TWO ADDRESSES 13 

lessly expressed. Their influence on one another was 
helpful; each gratefully acknowledged in the other a 
teacher. They had sympathy; but their tempera- 
ments, gifts and experience widely differed; each 
could supply the other's need. Norton was nine years 
the younger, but neither he nor Ruskin took note of 
that. Norton's study of Art was new. His friend had 
from childhood pursued beauty in leaf, in crystal, in 
cloud, in man's noble or devout sentiment expressed in 
cathedral or in painting. Hence for his younger 
friend he was a wonderful guide and showman for 
every Italian town. Hear Ruskin's acknowledgment 
of his debt. ''Norton saw all my weaknesses, meas- 
ured all my narrownesses and from the first took 
serenely, and, as it seemed of necessity, a kind of 
paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance 
— though the younger, . . . and always admitting 
my full power in its own kind; nor only admitting, 
but in the prettiest way praising and stimulating. . . . 
To me, his infinitely varied and loving praise became 
a constant motive to exertion, and aid in effort; yet 
he never allowed in me the sUghtest violation of the 
laws, either of good writing or social prudence, with- 
out instant blame or warning." 

Mr. Norton tells of Ruskin that he admitted it was 
characteristic of himself from childhood 'Ho be inter- 
ested in things clearly visible and present." Mr. Nor- 
ton said to him, one day, that when looking at a sunset 
he was altogether forgetful of the sunrise. "Yes," 
he replied, "but to-morrow morning I shall care only 



14 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

for the sunrise." This high-power lens of his vision, 
or intellect, or conscience, dimmed or shut out every- 
thing not in the Umited field, — till he chanced to 
look elsewhere. This was all very well for a kitten or 
a child, but it had sad consequences for those who in 
their youth, hungry for right teaching, had accepted this 
charming idealist and writer as a Pope infallible as to 
art, from methods of drawing to the virtue or sinful- 
ness of liking the paintings of Cimabue or of Raphael. 

Norton, with all his respect for the master, had 
common sense, and a Greek horror of the overmuch. 
He tried to check his friend's impulse to rush into 
weak superlatives; he was very tender of him and 
hated to have him criticised by others; and Ruskin 
frankly said Charles Norton was one of the "very few 
who have had the distinct power of the training Httle 
me to any good." In sadder days for both, Norton was 
to be his best stay and comfort. 

I think I am right in saying that Mr. Norton did 
not, during that visit to Europe, see as much of Ruskin 
as in the later years. He went on to Italy and read 
there in his books, saw pictures and churches and 
palaces with Ruskin's praise or blame in his mind; 
but, though modest and glad of instruction, and sym- 
pathetic, he had the old New England blood in him, 
sat at no man's feet, but studied and thought about 
what he saw, and made up his own mind, yet subject 
to new light. Mr. Norton learned the language of 
Italy and studied her history and poetry on the spot, 
in kindly relation with her people, high and low. The 



TWO ADDRESSES 15 

spell of Dante began to fall on him, to grow stronger 
with the passing of the years. Not long after his 
return, he pubhshed his ''New Life," the Vita Nuova, 
prose and verse rendered with a simple beauty. 

He had now regained comfortable, but never robust 
health; he had learned much; his outward and his 
inward eyes were opened to natural beauty, and the 
spiritual beauty of which it was the echo and symbol. 
Ruskin had done him a great service, Italy did more. 
Yet he did not wish to stay there: first and last he 
was an American. He knew that his countrymen and 
women needed all the elevating influences that he 
joyed to feel working in him, and were already awaken- 
ing to them. He had no conceit, but naturally went 
home to work, as one scholar more, in a community 
that needed such. He wished to do his part. 

Yet he came home when a cloud, forerunner of a 
devastating storm, lay heavily on the supposed inter- 
ests and heavier on the consciences of the people. He 
was never an agitator, and War seemed a calamity 
not to be thought of; but he, like his father before him, 
beUeved in the Higher Law. Yet in the lull before 
the storm an event happened in New England, a sign 
of promise that the awakening of thought and taste 
and spiritual life in the last decades was to find ex- 
pression; that our literature was to be more virile and 
less secondary than hitherto. The Atlantic Monthly 
was born in Boston, with Lowell in loco parentis, in 
November, 1857. Norton was one of the contributors 
to its brilliant first number. He also wrote for the 



16 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

North American Review, and, later, Lowell, when urged 
to become its editor, made it a first condition that Nor- 
ton should be his assistant; and he proved an active 
helper. 

In 1860 Mr. Norton produced his Notes of Study 
and Travel in Italy, an attractive book to-day, show- 
ing observation of history-in-the-making as well as 
study of the Past; and, as always, the ethical is as 
marked as the aesthetic quality. 

The guns of Sumter shook up the hot, chaotic mass 
of discordant opinion, and straightway public sentiment 
began to crystallize. The air cleared and was breath- 
able once more. And people found war, with all its 
terrors, better than the humiliations and suspense that 
had preceded it. Mr. Norton could not have served a 
month in the field, but he served at home, and well, 
all through the war. After the mortifying rout of 
the Union army at Bull Run, Mr. Norton wrote in the 
Atlantic Monthly on ''The Advantages of Defeat" to 
make Northern people rightly estimate the greatness of 
the problem, and feel that it must be dealt with wisely, 
steadily, and bravely, if the Country and the cause 
of Free Institutions were to be saved. Soldiers' Aid 
Societies sprang up in every town, and Mr. Norton 
gave his personal work at Cambridge; also to help 
that admirable agency, the Sanitary Commission. 
He was one of those who strengthened the hands 
of our noble War Governor, assuring him of the 
joy of all good citizens in his service in having 
"kept Massachusetts firmly to her own ideals, and 



TWO ADDRESSES 17 

himself represented all that was best in her spirit and 
aims." 

After the Peninsular Campaign, when the war began 
to drag, in August, 1862, that indefatigable patriot, 
John Murray Forbes of Boston, saw how it would 
help the vigorous prosecution of the war to collect 
clippings from all sources to encourage the people and 
the soldiers and spread doctrines of sound politics, 
honest finance, efficient recruiting, the deaUng with 
''contrabands," refugees, and spies, and send broad- 
sides made up of these clippings all over the land. 
Mr. Norton took charge of this work with admirable 
helpers, and these broadsides of the New England 
Loyal Publication Society were sent out once a week. 
Country editors gladly availed themselves of them, 
and it is thought that they reached one million readers. 
Mr. Norton was an active member of the "Committee 
of Fifty" alumni who planned and carried out the 
building of the Hall on the Delta in memory of the 
Harvard men who gave their lives for their Country. 

In May, 1862, Mr. Norton was happily married to 
Miss Susan Sedgwick. 

In the autumn and winter evenings of 1865-1866, 
Lowell and Norton came once a week to Longfellow's, 
at his request, to hear him read his renderings of 
Dante into English verse as literal as might be, and 
better them if they could. They knew their friend's 
sincerity, sweetness, and modesty, and so well that 
they obeyed the rule given by Ecclesiasticus, ''And 
be not faint-hearted when thou sittest in judgment." 



18 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

So all went well, and his work was helped. ''They 
were delightful evenings," said Mr. Norton. "There 
could be no pleasanter occupation. The spirits of 
poetry, of learning, of friendship were with us." 

His own love for Dante and insight into the deep 
significance of the great poem were quickened by 
these studies with his friends, and the demonstration, 
by Longfellow's magnificent attempt, of the difficulty 
of rightly rendering a subtile line of a poem in a Latin 
tongue by a line of a language so largely Teutonic, made 
him feel that he must translate the Divine Comedy 
into faithful and poetic prose, as later he did with the 
best success. 

In the summer of 1868, Mr. Norton went to Europe, 
taking with him his young wife and little children, 
his venerable mother, and his two sisters, and they 
remained abroad for five years, at first in Italy, later 
in Germany and England. During that time he was 
in close relation with Ruskin, by constant correspond- 
ence, when they were not together. 

The first three years of Mr. Norton's stay in the 
Old World towns were most happy in all ways; — the 
family fife in pleasant lands and far cities, alive with 
associations ; freedom from outside duties, so exacting 
at home; the sense of the rapid growth of his power 
to see beauty; the increasing love and reverence for 
Dante; the study of the minds and aspirations of the 
men of the Middle Ages, through their works, and 
in the original records, which he dihgently studied; 
the many profitable acquaintances; — all these made 



TWO ADDRESSES 19 

the days pleasant. But this was to change. In the 
autumn of 1871 Mr. Norton took his family to Dresden 
to spend the winter. There the great sorrow of his 
Ufe fell on him in the death of his wife, a woman 
beautiful in all ways. She left to him six Kttle chil- 
dren, and love and care for these were to help through 
the first darkness of the following years. Yet tender- 
ness to his family and friends seemed to be but 
strengthened; and those less near, who visited Mr. 
Norton and his family in their lodgings in England, 
found in that temporary home from which a light had 
gone out, and where a gracious presence was missed, 
the essence of a home still there, — courage and kind- 
ness made more real by the testing they had under- 
gone ; the cheerful lending of attention and sympathy 
to others, and duties done, and labors bravely pursued. 

Ruskin, older, more restless and sadder, was there; 
for that which was unbeautiful and dark in Ufe now 
occupied this sensitive soul more than art. These 
things wrought havoc with his mind and conscience, 
yet he would not cease from manifold studies and 
works. More than once his brain and body gave way 
in the succeeding years, yet his friend soothed, coun- 
selled, pleaded, and was his helper, as far as he could be 
helped, to the end ; but that did not come for years. 

In his earlier visit to England, Mr. Norton had 
formed a cordial friendship with Mrs. Gaskell, who 
dedicated one of her books to him, and one of his 
daughters bears her name. 

Mr. Norton found a new friend in the dreamer, 



20 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

turned brave worker, William Morris, but was es- 
pecially drawn to Burne-Jones by his earnest and 
thoughtful life and work. His old friend Stillman, of 
versatile mind and gifts, painter, woodsman, writer, 
brave friend of Greece and Crete in their troubles, 
was there. But for the first time Mr. Norton met 
Carlyle, now sad with a bereavement Uke his own, and 
broken with age. Carlyle visited him when he was 
convalescent from pneumonia and wrote of ''Norton, 
a man I like more and more." Again he wrote: "He 
is a fine, gentle, intelligent and affectionate creature, 
with whom I have always a pleasant, soothing and 
interesting dialogue when we meet, — the only fault 
yesterday was I liked it too well and staid too long." 

When the Nortons sailed for home in May, 1873, 
Carlyle wrote, "I was really sorry to part with 
Norton ... he has been through the winter the 
most human of all the company I, from time to time, 
had. A pious, cultivated, intelhgent, much-suffering 
man. He has been five years absent from America 
and is now to return One, instead of Two, as he left." 

But in those months in England, ill in body and 
with the joy of life broken, his sympathy and his 
quality so moved Carlyle, that he, later, entrusted to 
him the work of editing his Correspondence with Emer- 
son, a duty fulfilled with delicacy and exact fidelity 
to the spirit of the trust. Mr. Norton felt himself 
driven, by what seemed to him the gross violation by 
Froude of his dead friend's confidence and mandate, — 
in publishing parts of letters that should have been 



TWO ADDRESSES 21 

burned and, as published, were damaging and mis- 
leading, —to overcome his reluctance and bring out 
with dehcacy and conscience just so much more of 
the private correspondence as was necessary to correct 
the mischievous impression of the really loving, but 
sadly human, domestic relation which Froude's want 
of refined perception had spread abroad. The case 
required, in Mr. Norton's book in defence of his friend's 
memory, severe plain-speaking, which, however reluc- 
tantly, was done with courage and dignity. 

Sad and sick as Mr. Norton was during that stay 
in England, his close association with two elder friends, 
both suffering in their degree from their own griefs 
and failing health, though surely depressing, yet, I 
believe, wrought its good result. For both he felt 
affectionate pity. He let in rays of Hght into their 
dark days, and that comforted his own; and he saw 
how unlovely and unhelpful is pure pessimism. 

In 1873, in latter May, the doors of the ideal home 
at Shady Hill were once more opened to sunHght and 
to friends. This must have Hghtened the shadow left 
by his loss on Mr. Norton's mind. Also an event 
occurred which proved helpful to him in the way 
natural to him — the best way, helping others. The 
college close by was changed, for there was a new 
President. That institution had offered to youth a 
''Hberal education" for two hundred and thirty-eight 
years, and had created Bachelors and Masters of Arts, 
but the Fine Arts had had no recognition except by 
allusion. Mr. Norton was invited to give some lee- 



22 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

tures, and in 1875 was made Professor of the Fine 
Arts. Some thirty-four students attended; when he 
resigned in 1897, the attendance had increased thir- 
teenfold. He ploughed a fallow ground and sowed it 
for a crop sorely needed. Some of the seed fell on 
stony ground, but the harvest was good, and many 
were fed, and saved good seed-corn from which har- 
vests elsewhere in the land were to spring. The 
studies of the old-time compulsory curriculum used to 
be called ''The Humanities," and with reason. Now 
the humanities were to be taught to greater numbers 
than by Frisbie, Everett, Ticknor, Longfellow, Felton, 
and Lowell, and with a freer hand; and this was the 
more important as the opening sciences made their 
claim good, and popular feeling for the time was un- 
favorable to the classics. 

When this class had so many applicants that the 
lecture had to be given in Sanders Theatre, Mr. Nor- 
ton entered, looked out on the throng of students, 
and began, ''This is a sad sighf For he knew 
how large a fraction of his audience were idle boys 
who chose what they thought would be an easy course. 
''In these lectures," as his friend, Professor Charles 
H. Moore, said, Mr. Norton "drew aside a curtain and 
showed to thoughtless or immature boys a glimpse 
of the vast hall of being in which they, or their ances- 
tors, had constructed a little hut and yard, shutting 
out its celestial dimensions. Norton knocked a breach 
in these walls, and let them see Nature, and what her 
beauties symbolized," and the great interpreters of 



TWO ADDRESSES 23 

these as living teachers, and the relations of Poetry, 
History, Religion, Human Life, and Conduct, to Art. 

Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, one of those students 
who heard him, has well said that the secret of his 
influence with them lay in his power to humanize 
knowledge; that the fact was irradiated when shown 
hut as an example of general law. "The pertinence, 
the appUcability to yourself, of whatever art or his- 
tory or nature presents to you he unfolded very simply 
and with unforgettable impressiveness." 

Young artists just returned saturated with the 
teaching of the ateliers of Paris, or landscape-painters 
straining after the truth of vibrating atmosphere and 
prismatic coloring in nature, are apt to sneer at 
''Literary Art." But the scholar, however little he 
knows of technique — secrets of the craft — can from 
his training look on art as having been, through the 
ages, a measure of, and an engine of, civilization. 
Principles and motives, alike in steamships and pictures, 
come first; details of structure and finish important 
to their effectiveness, second. Mr. Norton treated art 
as man's effort at expression. 

Let me give a few questions from his examination 
papers: — 

Honos alit artes. In what sense is this true or false ? 

Assuming the fine arts to be modes of beautiful 
expression of mental condition, what is the meaning of 
"Morahty in Art"? Consider the test of excellence 
afiforded by choice of subject, by character of execu- 
tion. 



24 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

What does Civilization mean ? 

Discuss what Plato meant by: ''The man was 
seen to be a fool who . . . measured the Beautiful by- 
other standard than that of the Good;" and Goethe 
by: "The Beautiful is greater than the good." 

And it must have been with a smile that he sub- 
mitted to the young men's consideration, in one ques- 
tion, some remarks of that eminent art critic, Dr. 
Samuel Johnson — and of Ruskin. 

In art, he bade his students, not to imitate, but to 
follow their ideals, though the world call these illu- 
sions. 

Mr. Norton opened for these young scholars side 
doors showing vistas into the remote but shining Past, 
the songs, the deep questionings, the oracles, and the 
wisdom that men had won, one thousand or two 
thousand years before the scream of the American 
eagle had been heard. This gave his hearers a better 
perspective, which might teach them modesty. He 
showed how far from dead the great are, and that they 
are wise for to-day, since humanity is the same, and 
the great laws are, in Antigone's words, ''Not of now 
or yesterday, but always were." 

The teaching was ethical. He showed the sons of 
poor men mines of spiritual treasure ; the sons of rich 
men the responsibility of having : that wealth de- 
manded helpful use, and leisure unselfish work; that 
to be a mere dilettante and idle collector was demoraliz- 
ing. One must be a worker in some sort. All beauty 
is allied. "Behavior is a fine art," he said. Death is 



TWO ADDRESSES 26 

normal ; what is to be feared is necrobiosis — death in 
life — the sin against the holy Spirit. 

In many, in more than he knew, the leaven that he 
put into the lump worked ; the ferment was good. 

Certain criticisms on the trend of American activity 
and expression, purposely made very strong to com- 
mand the attention of the young generation, and 
recalUng Ruskin's sweeping dicta, naturally excited 
dissent. These were his judgments, perhaps too 
severe, and faUible; the steady lesson to the class 
was the high plane of thought and action native to 
the teacher. 

And many young hearers carried away httle else, 
yet that was worth coming to college for. A year 
before Mr. Norton died, I heard in one day the grateful 
witness of three diiferent graduates, now in full tide 
of useful life, to their debt to those lectures in opening 
their eyes to the beauty and the high possibihties of 
hfe. A lawyer, writing from the activities of State 
Street, Boston, just after Mr. Norton's death, speaks of 
his instruction as the "solid acquisition" he carried 
from college, without which he should feel himself a 
'^ poorer man." 

But Mr. Norton's relation with the University was 
not only as a teacher. It was administrative and ad- 
visory, and he made it human; for he was one of the 
Faculty, an Overseer, and for a time President of the 
Alumni Association. Coming back from Europe, where 
he had been in relation with the scholars, and at the 
fountains of Old World Culture, he was free from pro- 



26 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

vincialism, and could make wise suggestions in the 
now expanding University. In cases of misdemeanor, 
one of his colleagues has testified that he inclined al- 
ways toward mercy, to endeavors to tone up the 
boy, or, in cases requiring severity, to have him under- 
stand that it was better to stand his punishment, and 
see what good he could get out of the occasion. 

Mr. Norton believed in athletics, and sometimes 
attended the games, but in the great matches was 
saddened to see the abuses which the tremendous 
pressure of college spirit added to the intoxication of 
battle wrought there, and the extent to which they 
were tolerated by students and by spectators. In the 
interest of civihzation he made his protest against 
these excesses, but with very limited success, for the 
flood-tide ran too strong. Holding the faith of our 
fathers in true democracy, he saw how heavy a re- 
sponsibility rested with our universities in training 
youth so that that experiment should not fail, drowned 
in inrushing tides of ignorance and violence. Games 
in themselves are good and wholesome, but the Uni- 
versity must look to it to keep the concerns of the 
body subordinate to those of the spirit. 

But outside of the college he never grudged his time 
and help. He kept interest in and spoke at the Pros- 
pect Union in Cambridgeport, a club carrjdng on in a 
larger way the work of the evening school where he 
taught in youth. He was glad when the Harvard 
Annex, afterwards Radcliffe College, offered to girls 
the same advantages that young men enjoyed. He 



TWO ADDRESSES 27 

accepted the invitation of country lyceums to their 
wintry hospitahties. He kindly came to our Httle 
farming village, as Concord was forty years ago, to 
tell us about Tiu-ner in our Lyceum, and, unasked, not 
only brought ten of Turner's water-color sketches and 
bade me hang them in our public library for a week; 
but, hearing that two or three boys and girls had tried 
to copy them, wrote ''Keep them a fortnight longer." 
For a further instance of his great generosity, let me 
record that once, hearing of some one in Portland, 
Maine, who cared for Turner, he packed up and sent 
several of his own pictures thither. The great Port- 
land fire came and destroyed them all. 

Mr. Norton's early studies in art, stimulated by 
Ruskin, had been devoted to the beauty which the 
devotional spirit of the Middle Ages had called out of 
stone. But, in spite of the debased presentation of 
the Classic in the Renaissance buildings, his increasing 
knowledge led him to the simple yet studied beauty 
and majesty of the Greek. His professorship led him 
to the delightful task of gaining further acquaintance 
with Hellenic art, and that of the older empires. 
Happily for us in Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts 
was established soon after his return. He was from 
the first on the Board of Trustees, and his influence 
throughout was for most liberal expenditure for the 
best objects obtainable, after the most careful con- 
sideration. The educational influence of the Museum 
was urged and welcomed by him. In a letter written 
by him, but four years ago, to the New England His- 



28 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

tory Teachers' Association as to the use of museum 
collections, he gave this timely advice: '^The risk 
of study in a museum is that, instead of leading to the 
perception of beauty, — the highest object it can 
have, — it is too generally directed to merely scientific 
ends, that is, to the attainment of knowledge about the 
object, instead of to the perception and appreciation of 
that which makes the object, in itself, precious or 
interesting." 

Of his admirable and far-reaching work for history, 
art and culture in founding and working for the Archae- 
ological Institute of America, you, gentlemen, know 
more than I, your guest, and Professor Harris will 
speak to that point to-night. But as one who, at 
fourteen, dug good and lasting gifts out of Felton's 
Greek Reader, and forty-five years later had the joy 
of seeing gleaming in Grecian sunlight the marble 
exhumed by such labors as yours, let me render thanks 
to you and honor to your first President. 

Mr. Norton's feeUng, and that of all persons on 

whom the Greece of the Youth of the World has laid 

her spell, was expressed by John Sterling in his lament 

for Daedalus, by which name he personified the Art of 

Hellas. 

Wail for Dsedalus, all that is fairest, 
All that is tuneful in air or wave ; 
Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest 
Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave. 

Statues, bend your heads in sorrow, 

Ye that glance 'mid ruins old, 

That know not a past, nor expect a morrow 

On many a moonlight Grecian wold. 



TWO ADDRESSES 29 

Yet are thy visions in soul the grandest 
Of all that crowd on the tear-dimmed eye ; 
Though, Daedalus, thou no more commandest 
New stars to that ever-widening sky. 

Ever thy phantoms arise before us, — 
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
By bed and table they lord it o'er us 
With looks of beauty and words of good. 

Calmly they show us mankind victorious 
O'er aU that is aimless, blind and base. 
Their presence has made our nature glorious, 
Unveiling our night's illumined face. 

How industrious a worker Mr. Norton was may be 
shown by this: that in the twenty- two years during 
which he was giving college courses, — often six lectures 
a week, involving much preparation, — he, exercising 
meanwhile a wide hospitality and with many public 
and private duties, prepared and published his prin- 
cipal book, Historical Studies of Church Building in 
the Middle Ages, his Reminiscences of Carlyle, and 
edited the Correspondence of Carlyle and Goethe and 
that of Carlyle and Emerson; also Lowell's Letters, 
and various minor works, and made his admirable 
prose rendering of the Divine Comedy of Dante. 
Meantime he was a faithful correspondent, especially 
with Ruskin, and, during two summer trips abroad, 
did what he could to help his works and comfort his 
friend's later days. Also, after he was seventy-five 
years old, in the new century, Mr. Norton edited the 
Memorial of Two Friends (Lowell and Curtis), the 



30 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

little book on The Poet Gray as a Naturalist, and 
finally the two volumes of Ruskin's letters to him. 

Speaking of the first book Mr. Norton published, 
Studies in Italy, Ruskin said that, taken in connec- 
tion with Norton's Essay on the Vita Nuova, '^a 
more just estimate may be found of religious art in 
Italy than by the study of any other books yet exist- 
ing. At least I have seen none in which the tone of 
thought was at once so tender and so just." 

Mr. Norton always wrote clearly and with taste. 
His rendering of the Canzone in the New Life keeps 
wonderfully well this simple charm, and even in the 
far harder task of translating the Divina Commedia, he 
avoids pedantry and writes with simplicity and beauty. 
It should be enough to quote Mr. Lowell's statement, 
that Mr. Norton wrote ''first-rate English prose." To 
him one may apply what Lowell said of Dryden, ''He 
wrote as a gentleman, rather than an author." 

It has been regretted that so much of Mr. Norton's 
time was taken up with editing, and that he did not 
leave more original work. "The written word abides," 
— yet sometimes merely on shelves. What he did was 
faithful and excellent : the spoken word goes on its 
way, and is harder to trace ; none the less it has reached 
hundreds directly, and we believe is working still. 

Mr. Norton was happy in his friendships. That 
group of high-minded poets, and writers and teachers, 
some of them statesmen, yet all humane and helpers 
in their day, who, in the last century, gave standing 
to our country in the world of thought, and raised 



TWO ADDRESSES 31 

the tone of our people in a great crisis, — all called 
Norton friend. Yet he was not a disciple, nor too 
secondary. He was among the early members of the 
Satm-day Club, then a briUiant constellation; but 
when its brighter stars had vanished, one by one, still 
kindly came and presided at the table, where the old 
members perhaps were sadly present to him by their 
absence. 

It should be said also that the men of a far younger 
generation, bright, but in more Bohemian fashion and 
with less restrained deportment, asked him to be the 
President of the Tavern Club. He accepted, and 
ruled the wilder feast with genial tact and to the 
pleasure of the company while his strength allowed. 

Wherever he travelled or sojourned abroad, his 
courtesy, his cultiu-e, his kindness, found him friends. 
At home the bond was very dear between him and 
Lowell, Longfellow, and Professor Child; I think, too, 
with John Holmes. 

Mr. Norton always m-ged, and especially for Ameri- 
cans, the quickening of the imagination, especially 
through the great poets — ''the Imagination which 
unites us with our race, which lifts us out of mere 
narrow provincialism into our share in the eternal 
brotherhood of man." He urged, as the three essential 
books, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, as presenting 
respectively, (1) Homer, the natural man, dignified and 
noble, (2) Dante, man touched by spiritual interests, 
man seeking to reconcile the difficulties of this world 
with an interpretation of its relation to a spiritual life. 



32 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

which makes all things clear, and (3) Shakespeare for 
the truth of his presentation of human life to our 
knowledge and our sympathy. (I do not use his words 
in full.) 

But any story of Mr. Norton's life would be sadly 
lacking that did not bring in Ashfield, whither he 
went about 1869, wishing to give his family the safety 
and joy of country life in the summer. On his return 
from Europe he went back to that independent little 
village far off in the Franklin hills. There he estab- 
lished, not a summer cottage, but another home, — 
feeling that he must not use the town, but take part 
in its lot, and be a neighbor. Not long after, the 
good and brave gentleman, George William Curtis, 
visiting his friend, decided to make a home there, in 
the like spirit, for part of the year. Their good feeling 
and wishes were met by the people of the town. Their 
attitude should be a lesson to ''summer people," who 
talk of "natives," and recalls Tennyson's picture of 
Lancelot : — 

Then the great knight, the darling of the court, 

. . . into that rude hall 

Stept with all grace, and not with half disdain 

Hid under grace, as in a smaller time, 

But kindly man moving among his kind. 

Both kept a warm relation to Ashfield for the rest 
of their lives. They lent themselves to its service in all 
ways, and once a year at a village banquet drew ad- 
mirable and eminent guests thither to meet the Ashfield 
people. 



TWO ADDRESSES 33 

Their best service perhaps was to incite and help 
them to revive the dead Academy. This was done, and 
it was never in a more prosperous condition than to-day. 

Two months ago the people of Ashfield gathered in 
their town hall to express their sense of what Mr. 
Norton had been to them, as friend and helper. They 
told of the impulse for good which he had exerted through 
the years ; of the Academy and PubUc Library revived 
and bettered ; of the Cemetery Association and Village 
Improvement Society formed through his influence; 
also of the improved roads and pubhc buildings; of 
the Children's Fair, his suggestion, where each year 
was shown their handicraft, done at school or at home. 
They spoke of the annual academy dinners instituted 
and successfully carried on for twenty-five years, and 
over which he gracefully presided, "as a credit and 
honor to the town." I give the conclusion in their 
words, which I cannot better : — 

"In doing all this, he has asked the aid and coopera- 
tion of the townspeople, insisting that aU these im- 
provements were for their benefit, and worthy of their 
best efforts, thereby creating in every citizen a higher 
respect and deeper love for his native town. He has 
been not only a pubhc benefactor, but there are many 
who remember his quiet charities in time of trouble or 
need. He has lived very unostentatiously among us, 
and those who met him in his quiet study, and Ustened 
to his genial conversation, and his plans for the better- 
ment of the town, learned to have a high respect and 
deep love for him." 



34 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

After George Curtis's death/ Mr. Norton in his Me- 
morial Address at Ashfield, in 1896, said these words, 
which well might be spoken by another of him: — 

''No blessing can befall a community greater than 
the choice of it by a good man as his home; for the 
example of such a man sets a standard of conduct, 
and his influence, unconsciously not less than con- 
sciously exerted, tends to lift those who come within 
its circle to his own level." 

After the evidence already given of Mr. Norton's 
words and, more important, of his acts, I hardly 
think that he needs defence; yet some good people 
misapprehended him. Certain mannerisms, certain 
strong statements taken alone, or misquoted; stand- 
ards of taste and public duty differing from their own ; 
ignorance of his underlying kindness, of his faithful 
work and earnest concern for the right, led them 
variously to suppose him a dilettante, a carper out of 
all sympathy with his age and country, even a pessi- 
mist. "^ It is true he was impatient of optimism, being 
too sensitive to the evils of his day, public and private, 
and the dangers already looming even over America 
as results of low standards in politics, in trade, in 
culture, in conduct, to be content in waiting for things 
to work out right in secular time. He felt a duty to 
warn as well as work. No passive railer, but a scholar 
who had read the lesson of history, and knew the 
wisdom, never outgrown, of the great spirits of the 
Past, he, in his day, labored for the right with tongue 
and pen, and showed its beauty. 



TWO ADDRESSES 35 

Our general of noble memory, George Crook, said, 
''I don't believe much in general orders. Example is 
the best general order," and the simple Uving, the 
hospitality and the charity of kindness, the constant 
conscientious work — this unconscious example was 
the best of Mr. Norton's teaching. 

Courteous gentleman as he was, he carried the 
straight and keen sword of plain speech, and drew it 
sometimes a little suddenly, but honorably when he 
held that the occasion demanded. At a notable, well- 
nigh stormy Ashfield dinner, when, during the recent 
wars which were to him abhorrent, a subtle change 
was being wrought in the traditions and course of the 
United States, and the journals praised the President 
for "keeping his ear to the ground," Mr. Norton, in a 
brave but unpopular speech thus commented, — 
"Surely not the attitude most favorable to catch the 
message from on high." 

He said, "There was never a land that better de- 
served the love of her people than America," but he 
was as far as possible from the "Our Country, right 
or wrong" stripe of patriot. When he held that, at 
the parting of the ways, we had taken the first irre- 
trievable step wrong, he called on the rising generation 
to stand, none the less, for the right; and, pessimist 
as he was called, yet could end his speech with Nil 
(hsperandum de Republica. 

Far back in the darkest period of the Civil War, 
when the interference of England and France was im- 
minent, Lowell wrote for the Atlantic "The Washers 



36 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

of the Shroud." In a letter to Norton he tells that 
he was in his thought while writing, partly because of 
the suggestion, coming from a Breton legend shown 
him by Norton, but mainly I think, as knowing his 
friend's keen anxiety that its own right action should 
save the country. In a vision the poet comes on the 
Fates washing a shroud new-woven for the country 
that shall deserve its doom. They seem to doubt the 
destiny of our republic, and chant, — 

Three roots bear up dominion, — Knowledge, Will, — 

These twain are strong, but stronger yet the third, 

Obedience ; 'tis the great tap-root that still, 

Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, 

Though Heaven's loosed tempests spend their utmost skill. 

Rough are the steps, slow hewn in flintiest rock 
States climb to power by : slippery those with gold 
Down which they stumble to eternal mock. 
No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold 
Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block. 

But Mr. Norton was brave in his ideal patriotism, 
although at one time much obloquy was heaped on 
him. He did not retaliate. His position was secure; 
as he once wrote, ''However dark the skies, the lover 
of justice and peace knows that the stars are with 
him." 

Though he could not hold to the simple faith of his 
fathers, through life Mr. Norton strove to keep the 
spiritual in view. One who knew him intimately 
said, ''His appreciation of things lovely never at all 
bhnded him to the deeper significance of Ufe. He 



TWO ADDRESSES 37 

said that the moral issue was not in the least connected 
with theology or dogma." 

He treated all legends handed down by earnest 
believers, in whatever religion, with tenderness. At 
the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of 
his ancestor's church in Hingham, he said : — 

"A continuous spiritual life runs through the cen- 
turies, and here its continuity is most deeply felt, for 
here, in each generation, have high ideals been 
quickened, pure resolves animated, and all that was 
best in the hearts and souls of the men and women 
. . . cherished, strengthened and confirmed.'' 

''The path of duty . . . trodden by the common 
men and women of every period, is the thread of Ught 
running unbroken through the past up to the present 
hour. Creeds change, temptations differ, old land- 
marks are left behind, new perils confront us; but 
always the needle points to the North Star, and always 
are some common men and women following its guid- 
ance." These are not the words of a dilettante or a 
man without God in the world. 

Catholic in the best sense, he respected honest and 
devout believers in the Church of Rome. At the 
Ashfield Academy dinner, a "Forum" in which he 
insisted that the freest speech be allowed, he said, — 
''It is folly to call a community educated in which 
such an organization as the A. P. A. can spread widely. 
Its members have not learned the first lesson of good 
citizenship^' He recognized the Catholic Church as, 
on the whole, an important power for good in our 



38 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

country. When, some dozen years since, the Holy 
Ghost Hospital for Incurables, presided over by Grey 
Nuns from Montreal, was established almost at his 
door, Mr. Norton at once took an interest in it. He 
was chosen on the Board of Managers, and interested 
others, procuring important financial help. He not 
only gave helpful counsel, but frequently visited the 
patients, talking and reading with them. 

An instance of catholicity of mind most remarkable 
in one of Mr. Norton's temperament and breeding 
was given me by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 
Mr. Norton, he said, had, within a few years, told a 
Western friend that, if his life were to be lived again, 
he should like to live in Chicago, because he seemed to 
see working there, through the vulgarity and commer- 
cialism necessarily found in a young and prospering 
American town, a power for good, which would in time 
come to its own. I suppose he meant that strong 
loyalty that makes its dwellers, like toiling fathers, 
desire that the young Chicago should have every advan- 
tage and accomplishment that, perhaps, they had not. 

By years and in bodily strength, with some intru- 
sive ailments, old age came upon Mr. Norton after his 
threescore and ten, but to some of his friends his mind 
seemed freer, and his spirit even sweeter and more 
cheerful. With his friend Longfellow, he assumed that 

The night is not yet come ; we are not quite 
Cut off from labors by the faihng light. 
For Age is opportunity no less 
Then youth itself, though in another dress. 



TWO ADDRESSES 39 

He had modestly withdrawn from duties in the 
college, but his memory, judgment, taste, as well as 
his sight and hearing, were spared to him for another 
ten years. He set them to work on new tasks, and 
they answered his call. His hospitalities to body and 
soul went on. One of his kind customs for many 
years was, at Christmas, to invite the students who 
could not go home to gather at his deUghtful house 
for an evening. He could not go to Ashfield in his 
last summer, but bore the people and institutions of 
that time always in mind, and sent greetings and 
helpful advice in their affairs. 

During the last summer he grew weaker, and, when 
suffering in the dry heats of August, his first thought 
was to send to the Holy Ghost Hospital, off ering to put 
electric fans into the wards at his own expense. 

With autumn his strength failed rapidly, but he 
could enjoy and critically follow thoughtful books, as 
those of the younger Darwin and Morley, and he dic- 
tated good letters to his friends. 

Some of us remember how our American pride was 
rightly stirred when, in the fearful hurricane at Samoa, 
the officers and crew of the United States warship 
Trenton, with death before their eyes, cheered the 
British corvette Calliope as she steamed past them 
out to the safety of the open ocean. That high-hearted 
act is recalled by the last sentence of a cheerful and 
friendly letter sent by Norton from his bed but fifteen 
days before his death, to Colonel Higginson, his senior 
by four years. ... "I send a cheer to you from my 



40 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

slower craft, as your gallant three-master goes by it 
with all sails set." 

He died quietly on the 21st day of October, but a 
few weeks before his 81st birthday should have been 
celebrated. 

When we consider how on the waters of Life the 
consequences of each choice of word or act spread 
outward in widening circles, still going on, we feel 
that, in this world, surely, his spirit Uves and moves 
— and this is the only part of the universe which we 
know. 

For each true deed is worship : it is prayer, 

And carries its own answer unaware. 

Yes, they whose feet upon good errands run 

Are friends of God, with Michael of the sun. 



CHAELES ELIOT NOETON 

An Address Delivered before a General Meeting 

OF THE Archaeological Institute of America 

IN Toronto, December, 1908 

BY 

William Fenwick Harris 



CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

Professor Norton was fond of repeating this story: 
One day he was seated at a pubhc dinner next to 
William Hunt, a man who, as Mr. Norton expressed 
it, possessed a command of singularly piquant pro- 
fanity, which he had inherited, not, however, from his 
father. Some discretion is necessary in repeating the 
anecdote. In a pause in the dinner, Norton drew from 
his pocket a small piece of Japanese artistry. Passing 
it to his neighbor, he asked if it was not beautiful. 
''Beautiful!" cried Hunt in great excitement; "why, 
Norton, that is the Damned Ultimate !" The expres- 
sion, unnecessarily expressive though some may hold it 
to be, describes perfectly, I think, the effort of Norton's 
whole hfe. It was Howells, if my memory is correct, 
who said of him that of all the men of New England 
he had met, Norton was the one who had done the 
utmost possible with what Nature had given him. 
Truly his struggle was always to live up to the advice 
Peleus gave to his valiant son when he was setting out 
for the Wars, — 

aiev api(TT€V€iv koX v'rrelpo')(pv e/xfievat aXXcov. 
" Ever to strive for the best and to be preeminent over others." 

And this was united with another quality, equally 
noble, a genius for friendship and a willingness to 
sacrifice himself in the effort to help any one who was 



44 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

worth the helping. Colleague or young student, great 
man or struggling author, was ever welcome at Shady 
Hill, and always treated with that gentle courtesy of 
an older world, a courtesy that many have marked in 
Mr. Norton as possessing the most perfect democracy. 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson once told me that he 
had never seen any man so treat all the world, great 
or small, as so perfectly his equal, never condescending 
to the lowly nor subservient to the great. His willing- 
ness to give so ungrudgingly of his time has greatly 
reduced the possible product of his own pen; it has 
given to scholarship and letters, however, aid and 
encouragement not to be estimated. Numberless 
prefaces to books bear testimony of their authors' 
debts, and ours, too. It is true, I feel sure, that no one 
man in America has exerted a greater influence on other 
people's books than has Norton. Professor George 
Herbert Palmer once told me a charming story which 
well illustrates the desire to serve and the kindliness 
of which I have spoken. In preparing the text for his 
edition of the poet whose name he bears, Palmer found 
it necessary to use the first edition of Herbert's works, 
but a copy was not to be had, although Quaritch, who 
is supposed to find anything, was authorized to offer 
an extravagant price for it. Learning that Norton 
possessed a copy. Palmer with «ome trepidation ven- 
tured to ask if he might use it for a day or so. Mr. 
Norton was leaving for his summer home at Ashfield, 
but nothing must do but Palmer should take the book 
for the summer. When not in use the treasure was 



TWO ADDRESSES 45 

carefully locked away in a safe, and was returned the 
day the owner came back from Ashfield. Mr. Norton 
listened with great interest to Palmer's account of the 
profit he had had from the book. Next morning the 
latter found a neat packet in his hall, with a note to 
this effect in Mr. Norton's exquisite handwriting : — 

"My DEAR Palmer: I realized last night after you 
had gone, that this book belongs to you rather than to 
me. Will you please accept it?" 

Another story, one of many, illustrates the same 
qualities. A young instructor in Cambridge was 
keenly anxious to possess a certain book of rarity and 
price. Norton had a copy, and knew the younger man's 
desires. Meeting the instructor one day upon the 
street, Norton remarked quite casually, "I have just 
seen a copy of your book at the Cooperative, and at 
a very reasonable price." No time was lost in the 
purchase. It was only long afterwards that the happy 
possessor reahzed how strange it was that such a book 
should be in such a place at such a price. 

The world at large saw in Norton a stern critic of 
all that was ignoble, and failed to recognize the genial 
urbanity that was his. Between Europe and America 
and the great men of both, he served as literary ambas- 
sador extraordinary and plenipotentiary. When the 
treasures of the great chest which stood in his library 
are published we shall know how well he served in this 
capacity. 

Norton had graduated in the Harvard class of 1846 



46 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

with Francis J. Child, George Martin Lane, and 
George F. Hoar. He "highly distinguished" himself 
in Greek and Latin, and "excelled" in political econ- 
omy, technical official phraseology of the day, which, 
strange to say, really shows some prescience of the 
student's future life. His early experience and travels 
in the service of an East India house gave him that 
practical businesslike directness which always served 
him well. Travel in Europe, brief teaching in Cam- 
bridge, writing his volume of "Considerations on 
Some Recent Social Theories," editing his father's 
works, further travel in Europe, brought him to one 
of the greatest influences of his life, — John Ruskin. 
It was Ruskin, I think, more than his travels, which 
turned him to Italian art. A scene is reported where 
Ruskin and Norton were both present; Norton ex- 
pressed, as was his way, a pronounced opinion on a 
technical point in Italian art. "How presumptuous, 
Charles," cried Ruskin. "You have no right to an 
opinion on such a subject !" But continued study and 
observance of the relations of art and humanity soon 
gave him a right to opinion on almost any of the 
larger subjects connected with Italian art. From 
these years began his study of Dante, in which he was 
ever perfecting himself. It is in this field that he 
accompHshed the most in minute as well as large 
study ; it is as a student of Dante that he is best known 
abroad, and it is as Dante's translator that his ulti- 
mate fame will probably rest. When we undergraduates 
used to Usten to his comments on the "Divine Comedy," 



TWO ADDRESSES 47 

we thought they were the off-hand sayings of inspira- 
tion ; when years later I had the privilege of dropping 
in at Shady Hill of a morning, I could note the teacher's 
chair between the window and the fireplace, surrounded 
by concentric rings of books five and ten deep, as he 
read the canto and prepared his remarks for later 
undergraduates. The final revision of his translation 
shows that even in his latest years he was keeping 
abreast of the most recent learning in subjects con- 
nected with Dante. His translation is both the most 
interesting and the most scholarly which has appeared. 
He has been thought of as a dilettant ; he was, how- 
ever, a great scholar who never became a pedant, 
one who could deal in generahties but always support 
his generalities by minute knowledge. In that he 
was a lesson and an inspiration to others. His deep 
learning covered an enormous field ; he was polymath 
and practical bibliographer ; specialists in many fields 
had recourse to him for information. His library 
was the Paradise of the bibliophile as well as the 
scholar, two types of humanity not often united in one 
man, or even resembling that loose union of apparent 
opposites which Plato describes in the " Phaedo." His 
many-sided scholarship, his power to transmute his 
knowledge into terms of a common humanity, his 
insistence on true excellence in scholarship and life, 
were a noble combination. 

In the years after his return from Europe he was mak- 
ing splendid preparation for that Professorship to which 
he was appointed in 1875. He announced his subject 



48 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

as " The History of the Fine Arts and their Relation to 
Literature." President Eliot has recently shown, in 
the Norton Memorial Number of the Harvard Gradu- 
ates^ Magazine, how rapidly the field of instruction 
in these lectures expanded, and how, throughout the 
whole series of courses, there ever remained prominent 
that intimate association of hterature with the fine 
arts which characterized the initial lectures. It was 
to this broad humanity that thousands of Harvard 
students attribute lasting improvement in their modes 
of thought, their intellectual and their moral interests. 
He was the scholar all the time; but the boon his 
students got from him was the glimpse of a true and 
noble personahty ; he dealt with the fine arts, but his 
parish was the wide world; the facts one learned in 
his courses, many as they were, were not the main 
thing ; it was the man and his tone that were of prime 
importance. Herein is the great debt which not 
Harvard men alone, but all Americans, owe him, just 
as to Jowett not only Oxford men, but Enghshmen in 
general, owe a benefit which shall surely not pass with 
the generation which heard the spoken word. He 
dealt with important fractions of succeeding genera- 
tions in their youth ; and for years he held up to them 
the highest ideals of life, of conduct, of taste, of culture, 
and of politics. He filled a great many vessels which 
were sent out into the world. It is impossible to 
overestimate the influence which his teachings must 
directly and indirectly exercise upon the men whom 
he addressed and, through them, upon their children 



TWO ADDRESSES 49 

and their friends. No American has had a larger audi- 
ence of students. He dealt with the stream at its 
source, and his influence must be felt all through its 
subsequent course. 

When the future biographer of Mr. Norton comes 
to his task, he will find one of his most interesting 
chapters in the foundation of the Archaeological Insti- 
tute of America and of the American School of Classical 
Studies at Athens, the material for which is very rich 
in the manuscript records of the early days of the 
Institute. In the course of years, extracts from these 
should be published, when scholars of the classics in 
this country will know fully the great debt they, their 
fathers, and their successors, owe to Mr. Norton. 
Both the Institute and the School were distinctly his 
ideas and his alone in their origin, so far as I can 
discover from searching of records and from diligent 
inquiry among the men of older days. Since his time, 
the records of the Institute and of the School have 
become practically a directory of scholars of the classics 
in America, and the work of both Institute and School 
may truly be said to have extended an influence far 
beyond the classical field. It was in 1879 that the 
Institute was founded; it was two years later that a 
committee was appointed looking to the foundation 
of the School. I think the idea of the School had been 
in Norton's mind from the beginning; he had cer- 
tainly thought much of the Institute before 1879. 
His life and pursuits naturally were leading him in 
the direction of extending the field of his studies and 



50 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

his teaching in many new Unes. His interest in things 
Greek, always great, was constantly increasing. In the 
spring of 1878 his friend Lowell was in Athens. In that 
same year an appeal was made to the British public, 
by Professor Jebb, to further archaeological research 
by the establishment of an English School at Athens 
and Rome. The English appeal contained these 
words: "The student of Greek and Latin books 
should be made to feel that the Greeks and Romans 
were real Uving people, to have some clear knowledge 
not only of their laws and wars, but also of their social 
life and of the objects that surrounded them in their 
everyday existence, and to enjoy the most beautiful 
creations of their art in the light shed upon these 
from a kindred source in the masterpieces of their 
literature." Lowell's letters to Norton show the 
profound influence exerted on him by the Acropolis. 
I cannot help associating the presence of Lowell in 
Greece and the appeal of Jebb in their probable effect 
on Norton. At any rate, he was soon endeavoring 
to find out possible sites for exploration in Greek 
lands, and with that well-directed zeal which always 
marked his activities, going about among his friends, 
asking them for their cooperation in the formation of 
a society for the purpose of furthering and directing 
archaeological investigation and research. Such suc- 
cess did he meet that in April, 1879, a circular was 
issued asking for members for the proposed society. 
Among others joined to Mr. Norton in signing the 
circular were President Eliot, Alexander Agassiz, 



TWO ADDRESSES 51 

Professor Goodwin, Professor Putnam, Martin Brimmer. 
Within a month, over a hundred members were ob- 
tained. I need not give a history of the Institute or of 
its work, for both are well known. It is of profound 
interest, however, to see the part played by Norton. 
He was the Institute. "Archaeological Institute of 
America?" queried one who did good work in the 
service. — ''No!" "Archaeological Institute of New 
England?" — ''No!" "Archaeological Institute of 
Boston?" — "No! Archaeological Institute of Shady 
HiU!" 

Dr. Holmes, writing to Lowell on May 13, 1879, 
said, not without genial malice : — 

"I had some talk (at the Saturday Club) last time 
with Charles Norton, who is greatly interested in an 
Archaeological Association of which he is the moving 
spirit. It is going to dig up some gods in Greece, — 
if it can get money enough. I suppose they may be 
requu-ed in some quarters to supply an apparent want." 

Charles Norton was indeed the moving spirit, and 
he was truly supplying an apparent want, even if the 
Institute has not devoted itself exclusively to gods in 
Greece. Meetings of the executive committee of the 
young Institute came with astounding frequency, the 
President always in the chair, and yet always, appar- 
ently, doing most of the talking and directing, though 
surrounded by a generous body of cooperators. It is 
astonishing to see how he anticipated practically all 
the problems which have faced the officers of the 
Institute in later years. He met every situation with 



52 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

a sane radicalism ; the dominant note was ever : — 
"We want nothing but the best." The best always 
costs a great deal of money, but where the treasury 
was empty, he still insisted, with far-seeing courage, 
on the best. ''Mr. Norton stated," a record reads, 
"that he had recently been to Providence, where he 
had spoken before a select audience in regard to the 
Institute, and had come back with a thousand dollars 
promised, and prospect of more." The Institute was 
intended to further investigation in this country as 
well as in classic lands. The interest of the founder 
was, at that time, largely in things Greek, yet he ever 
generously favored liberal aid to research in America. 
To the gratification of all scholars and lovers of learn- 
ing throughout the country, the idea of the Institute 
met with cordial cooperation on the part of our leading 
colleges and universities. The School at Athens was 
almost immediately founded. The Institute became 
one of the important means for the advancement of 
sound learning in America. Under Professor Norton's 
catholic direction the work took a wide range ; investi- 
gations were conducted at Assos in the Troad and in 
the southwest of our own country; the interests of 
architecture were fostered; the higher intellectual 
pursuits in the community were aided by a study of 
the close relationship of the art and thought of the 
ancient world to our own. And more than all else, he 
started a stream of American scholars to classic lands. 
These men have been inspired by an increased realiza- 
tion of the vitality and splendor of the life and litera- 



TWO ADDRESSES 53 

ture of the people who dwelt around the Mediter- 
ranean. And this inspiration they have brought back 
to innumerable pupils in this land, so that the seed of 
Norton's sowing has gone on, ever increasing. 

Such is the debt which many of us owe. A larger 
body of students owes a broader debt to the quiet 
scholar who sat in his study and fearlessly expressed 
his opinion of the events that were taking place around 
him, exercising on the public at large the same influ- 
ence which, as professor, he held over the students who 
attended his courses. That standard of true excel- 
ence to which he ever held himself, he insisted on for 
others, and men ralUed about him all over the country. 
The simple existence of such a man with no private 
ends to serve, who is always ready and willing to tell 
his fellows the truth, and who does it clearly and un- 
flinchingly, is a blessing to a community, demanding 
for its ennobling influence a gratitude that cannot be 
overpaid, stimulating and leading men to high achieve- 
ment, and maintaining those quaUties of dignity, of 
skill, and of high ideals which were so conspicuous in 
his own personaHty. That such a voice, so broadly 
heard, should issue from the study of a teacher is an 
inspiration. That is the highest debt which scholar- 
ship owes to Charles Eliot Norton. 

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